Split a JSON to multiple lines using UNIX command line tools

Question

We have a JSON file that needs to be multi-lined instead of being single lined as shown below,

{this is the first block},{this is the second block, really},{this is the third you're kidding:no}

We expected it to be like this so that it can be fed to an external program to read it without issues,

{this is the first block}
{this is the second block, really}
{this is the third you're kidding:no}

I'm not an expert with simple text processing tools like awk, sed, cut but I did try with sed for sometime unsuccessfully.

cat test.json | sed 's/},/\n/g'
{this is the first block
{this is the second block, really
{this is the third you're kidding:no}

What is the best way to do this?

seems like you need }\n instead of \n in your sed attempt — Sundeep
– Sundeep, Commented Nov 18, 2020 at 3:29
To be JSON, it would need to be in an array, starting with [ and ending with ]. Is that the case for your real data? — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Nov 18, 2020 at 3:35
To illustrate @CharlesDuffy's comment echo '[{"a":0},{"b":1},{"c":2}]' | jq -c '.[]' — Léa Gris
– Léa Gris, Commented Nov 18, 2020 at 3:41

Léa Gris · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-18 03:47:19Z

3

Since it is not JSON and you just want to split:

input_file

{this is the first block},{this is the second block, really},{this is the third you're kidding:no}

sed 's/},/}\n/g' input_file

output

{this is the first block}
{this is the second block, really}
{this is the third you're kidding:no}

answered Nov 18, 2020 at 3:47

Léa Gris

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Comments

Raman Sailopal · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-18 10:19:14Z

1

Awk alternative:

awk 'BEGIN { RS="(,?{)|(},?)" } /[[:alnum:]]/ { print $0="{"$0"}" }' file

Set the records separator to one or more commas and { or } and one or more commas. Then, when an alpha numeric string is encountered, prefix { to the string, append } and print

answered Nov 18, 2020 at 10:19

Raman Sailopal

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